Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 18:23:27 -0800 From: Jay Hanson To: ab3f+@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: The Industrial Religion The Industrial Religion By Jay Hanson - November 4, 1993 This document is herby placed in the public domain. Interested parties may use this material in any way they wish. Hopefully it will help save us all -- we haven't got much time. Jay Hanson 78-6622 Alii Drive Kailua-Kona, HI 96740 Phone/FAX 808-322-7268 ================== == Propositions == ================== On November 18, 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists, representing over 1,500 of the world's leading scientists (including 99 Nobel laureates), issued an Urgent Warning to Humanity that implored all peoples of the world to halt the accelerating damage to Mother Earth's life support systems. The scientists warned us that we may have as little as ten years to avert the environmental disasters that now confront us.*1 "The human world is beyond its limits. The present way of doing things is unsustainable. The future, to be viable at all, must be one drawing back, easing down, healing." If correction is not made, a collapse is certain "within the lifetimes of many who are alive today."*2 "If scientific projections are correct, the human species will experience the unfolding of an entire geological epoch in less than one lifetime. . . . The potential damage to life and property along coastal areas is likely to be unprecedented in human history. . . . If we continue to ignore the Entropy Law and its role in defining the broad context in which our physical world unfolds, then we shall do so at the risk of our own extinction." -- Jeremy Rifkin, ENTROPY: Into the Greenhouse World "On nearly every issue we have failed to apply the precautionary principle when it was appropriate -- indeed prudent -- to do so. We have had more than enough talk about environmental problems. . . . Despite the very real achievements and advances of recent years, the state of the world environment and the living conditions of many of its people have continued to get worse. . . . we no longer have the luxury of picking and choosing what to do next: the state of the world environment demands that we take action simultaneously on a broad front, with no further delay. . . It is no exaggeration to say that the ability of the biosphere to continue to support human life is now in question."*3 "Before enlightened self-interest takes hold, we must radically reevaluate what our self-interest really is. Trite or foolish as it may sound, the world requires a spiritual revolution -- a revolution on the outlook on life, a change of heart, a metanoia. Almost everyone throughout the civilized world pays lip service to the environment today, but not all are realizing the extent of the change in attitudes and behavior necessary to save the planet."*4 "The only processes that we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end."*5 "Economics plays a central role in shaping the activities of the modern world, inasmuch as it supplies the criteria of what is economic' and what is uneconomic,' and there is no other set of criteria that exercises a greater influence over the actions of individuals and groups as well as over those of governments."*6 -- economist E.F. Shumacher "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. . . . It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."*7 -- economist John Maynard Keynes "Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can. . . . there is inherent in the capitalist system a tendency toward self-destruction."*8 -- economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter "America is becoming a land of private greed and public squalor."*9 -- Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich "If the truth be known, we are on the verge of losing an entire generation of our young people, killing and dying in the streets of America." -- U.S. Representative Ron Dellums "Form determines content. Corporations are machines."*10 -- economist and advertising executive Jerry Mander ================== == Introduction == ================== As we race towards the 21st century, we find ourselves in the midst of rapid and profound change. We see our workers' paychecks able to buy fewer and fewer necessities each year. We see our financial institutions looted by professional crooks, prison populations soaring, teenage gang violence exploding and our public schools rotting away. We see our once-beautiful Hawaii covered with concrete. We see un-happiness everywhere! What went wrong? Instead of richer and happier, we see that traditional economic development has actually made us poorer and un-happier. Indeed, history has shown us (very forcefully) that the pursuit of traditional economic development is actually the pursuit of un-happiness. Who (or what) has benefited from traditional economic development? Have we considered that widespread un-happiness might be due to faulty economic theory? Could the problem be that happiness is un-economical? Or worse, is it possible that un-happiness is good for corporate profits? What's wrong with our government? If America is really a democracy, why can't we solve our social problems? If America is not a democracy, what kind of government is it -- and who (or what) is in control? The answers revolve around three central ideas: human "needs" are different from human "wants," "human needs" are different from "corporate needs," and corporations are different entities from those humans who own or operate them. We will begin with a glance at the man who planted the amoral seeds for modern-day political and economic theory: Niccolo Machiavelli. ================================================== == Niccolo Machiavelli planted the amoral seeds == ================================================== Machiavelli was born in 1469 and is considered by many to be the founder of modern political science. His chief contribution to political thought lies in his freeing political action from moral considerations. Machiavelli insisted that morals have no place in politics, people are fundamentally bad, and the end justifies the means. In other words, he "abolished the moral problem" for politics. For example, consider Machiavelli's practical advice on how to gain power: "You must recognize that there are two ways of fighting: by means of law, and by means of force. The first belongs properly to man, the second to animals; but since the first is often insufficient, it is necessary to resort to the second. . . . Nor did a prince ever lack legitimate reasons by which to color his bad faith. One could cite a host of modern examples and list the many peace treaties, the many promises that were made null and void by princes who broke faith, with the advantage going to the one who best knew how to play the fox. But one must know how to mask this nature skillfully and be a great dissembler. Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions."*11 Machiavelli's political ideas combined with Adam Smith's economic theories to found "Industrial Religion."*12 Today, apostles of Industrial Religion are destroying our communities and sentencing our children to living (and dying) a horrible nightmare. America: what went wrong? ================================= == America's moral foundations == ================================= Thomas Jefferson laid the sacred*13 moral foundations of America in 1776. TRUTH, EQUALITY, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and HAPPINESS are pivotal ideas in our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths"; "all men are created equal"; "among which are life, liberty"; "deriving their just powers"; "the pursuit of happiness." Today, we seldom concern ourselves with the first four ideas, instead, we focus on the pursuit of happiness. It is true that happiness is a worthy goal we all ought to pursue, but we need to understand what true happiness is in order to find it. Mortimer J. Adler says that happiness is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. Happiness is living the human life fulfilled by the things that we all naturally need.*14 But confusion over the words "need" and "want" has frustrated our pursuit of happiness. The words are commonly used as if their meanings were equivalent. They're not. "Needs" are natural desires, the same in all human beings, for they are inherent in human nature. Moreover, there are a finite number of human needs. Material needs include such basics as air, food, water, shelter, sleep and physical security. Our social needs include things like true economic security (not just jobs), love, affection, acceptance, esteem by others and self-esteem. Moral needs include such things as service, meaningfulness, aesthetics, perfection, truth and justice. For example, a good education, a sense of community and a dependable job are needs. "Wants" are acquired desires and differ among individuals.*15 Unlike needs, there are an infinite number of human wants. For example, drinking beer, buying jewelry, buying milk bottle caps and watching professional sports on television are wants. We are easily diverted from our needs when we encounter un-happiness such as disappointment with our jobs, disgust with government corruption, worry about our children or the continual stress of trying to make ends meet. Instead of confronting the source of un-happiness, most people respond by recoiling from it, looking immediately for ways to escape or ignore it. Hedonistic pursuits (such as alcohol, smoking, candy and watching mind-killing television) bring us temporary happiness by diverting our attention away from our underlying needs. Faulty logic leads us to conclude that we can be permanently happy if we can enjoy permanent hedonism (i.e., stay drunk). Indeed, it can be argued that every addiction is caused by an intense and continuing need for distraction from un-happiness -- addiction is distraction. Thus, we can see how our pursuit of happiness has been transformed into our addiction to hedonism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles [proletarians or working class] paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory." -- George Orwell, 1984 ============== == Hedonism == ============== The ancient founders of hedonism, Epicurus and his disciples, thought that pleasure and happiness were identical -- at first. But as they began to identify other features of a good life, it soon became apparent to them that some things are even more desirable than pleasure. Plato opposed hedonism by arguing that if a life which includes both pleasure and wisdom is more desirable than one which includes pleasure alone, then pleasure can't be the only good. In a similar manner, Aristotle argued that the pleasure accompanying a worthy activity is good, but the pleasure accompanying an unworthy activity is bad. In the modern world, the leading self-avowed hedonist was John Stuart Mill, who acknowledged Epicurus as his teacher. Like Epicurus, Mill could not long maintain the simple-minded view that pleasure is the only good. "There is no known Epicurean theory of life," Mill writes, "which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and the imagination and of moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than those of mere sensation."*16 But Mill's powerful appeal to our higher sentiments could not withstand the seductive ideas of Adam Smith. ====================================== == Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" == ====================================== In the Middle Ages, the naked pursuit of wealth was named "avarice" and considered a sin. But avarice was re-labeled self-interest and became a virtue when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776 -- the same year that Thomas Jefferson wrote our Declaration of Independence. Whereas Jefferson failed to mention selfishness as one of America's founding ideas, Smith argued that selfishness was fundamental for prosperity and must not be constrained by explicit moral considerations (Smith had read his Machiavelli). For Smith to be right, Jefferson must have completely forgotten a very important idea. But Jefferson didn't omit selfishness from our founding ideas by accident; in fact, he was strongly opposed to selfishness: "Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue."*17 Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson's passionate appeal for moral restraint fell on selfish ears. The celebrated economist Joan Robinson sarcastically describes Smith's remarkable ideology: "This is an ideology to end all ideologies, for it has abolished the moral problem. It is only necessary for each individual to act egotistically for the good of all to be attained."*18 Abolished the moral problem, indeed! The moral problem of selfishness continues -- but morality is no longer a problem for economics. ========================================= == Economics denied the higher virtues == ========================================= Smith said that "laissez-faire" (let alone) economics would allow selfish individuals to raise the wealth of the working class automatically, as if by an "Invisible Hand." The idea of laissez-faire economics is described in a short passage from his Wealth of Nations: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens." Smith hoped that if we concentrated on self-interest, certain innate human attributes would regulate economic activity: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it." Smith added: "Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interests in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men." In other words, Adam Smith assumed that the innate empathy, morality and ethics of individuals would somehow regulate laissez-faire economic activity. Unfortunately, Jefferson was a better judge of human nature than Smith. In the 1870s, the new celebration of selfishness was named "economics" by William Stanley Jevons who defined it as: ". . . the mechanics of utility and self-interest . . . to satisfy our wants to the utmost with the least effort -- to procure the greatest amount of what is desirable at the expense of the least desirable -- in other words, to maximize pleasure, is the problem of economics."*19 Jevons should have added that economics has a few other itsy-bitsy problems. For example, in The Economic Way of Thinking, economist Paul Heyne tells us that we really don't "need" such a thing as clean water, because there are no "needs." There are only "wants," and these are backed up by purchasing power, or "demand." Demand can always find substitutes, says Heyne, for there are "substitutes everywhere."*20 Heyne's wild assertions point out a basic doctrine of economics: enough money will enable one to find a substitute for anything. How is it possible that otherwise rational men believe this? Is economics some sort of magic act? Alchemy was an ancient art practiced in the Middle Ages devoted chiefly to discovering a substance that would transmute the more common metals into gold or silver and to finding a means of indefinitely prolonging human life. Alchemy was dubious and often illusory -- alchemy was in many ways the predecessor of modern economics. For example, in his 1974 lecture to the American Economic Association, Robert Solow defended his illusion of unlimited economic growth: "the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources." Like an alchemist who claims that he can change lead into gold, Solow is claiming that he can change money into any exhaustible resource: "at some finite cost, production can be freed of dependence on exhaustible resources altogether."*21 Leapin Lizards! (In 1987, Solow won the Nobel prize for economics.) Economists have even gone so far as to assert that selfishness is the will of God! Economist Hermann Gossen tells us that not only is the maximization of individual pleasure God's will, it is "life's ultimate purpose." Gossen maintains that any moral restraint would inhibit God's master plan. As Gossen puts it, "It would only frustrate totally or in part the purpose of the Creator were we to attempt to neutralize this force in total or in part, as is the intention of some moral codes promulgated by men." And he asks with moral indignation: "How can a creature be so arrogant as to frustrate totally or partly the purpose of his creator?"*22 (Was Gossen thinking of a new type of God -- an industrial God?) The good news is that economics is catching-up with the rest of the world. In 1992, Gary Becker won the Nobel prize for "having extended the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior which had previously been dealt with -- if at all -- by other social science disciplines such as sociology, demography, and criminology."*23 In 1993, Robert Fogel shared the prize for discovering that "There is such as thing as morality and morality is higher than economics."*24 (My God!) Thus, this economic way of thinking, which unfortunately corrupts all modern thought, has "abolished the moral problem," has denied that needs are any different from wants, has re-labeled the medieval sin of avarice the virtue of self-interest; and has sanctified America's "Industrial Religion." ================================= == In God we trust! Which God? == ================================= The distinguished psychoanalyst Erich Fromm is best known for his application of psychoanalytic theory to social and cultural problems. Fromm's approach to personality is wide ranging in its perspectives and propositions. He is not exclusively a psychoanalyst but draws on information from other disciplines -- notably, history, sociology, and anthropology. Fromm's books have been tremendously popular, reaching audiences all over the world. Perhaps more than any other theorist, he has made us aware of the continuing and interrelated impact of social, economic, and psychological factors on human nature.*25 In To Have or To Be, Fromm shows that while our official religion is Christian, we secretly worship power, money and success: "[The social character of society] must fulfill any human being's inherent religious needs. To clarify, 'religion' as I use it here does not refer to a system that has necessarily to do with a concept of God or with idols or even to a system perceived as religion, but to any group-shared system of thought and action that offers the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion. Indeed, in this broad sense of the word no culture of the past or present, and it seems no culture in the future, can be considered as not having religion. "This definition of 'religion' does not tell us anything about its specific content. People may worship animals, trees, idols of gold or stone, an invisible god, a saintly person, or a diabolic leader; they may worship their ancestors, their nation, their class or party, money or success. Their religion may be conducive to the development of destructiveness or of love, of domination or of solidarity; it may further their power of reason or paralyze it. They may be aware of their system as being a religious one, different from those of the secular realm, or they may think that they have no religion, and interpret their devotion to certain allegedly secular aims, such as power, money, or success, as nothing but their concern for the practical and the expedient. The question is not one of religion or not? but of which kind of religion? -- whether it is one that furthers human development, the unfolding of specifically human powers, or one that paralyzes human growth. ". . . for we are what we are devoted to, and what we are devoted to is what motivates our conduct. Often, however, individuals are not even aware of the real objects of their personal devotion and mistake their 'official' beliefs for their real, though secret religion. If, for instance, a man worships power while professing a religion of love, the religion of power is his secret religion, while his so-called official religion, for example Christianity, is only an ideology. "Luther established a purely patriarchal form of Christianity in Northern Europe that was based on the urban middle class and the secular princes. The essence of this new social character is submission under patriarchal authority, with work as the only way to obtain love and approval. "Behind the Christian facade arose a new secret religion, 'industrial religion,' that is rooted in the character structure of modern society, but is not recognized as 'religion.' The industrial religion is incompatible with genuine Christianity. It reduces people to servants of the economy and of the machinery that their own hands build. "The industrial religion had its basis in a new social character. Its center was fear of and submission to powerful male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt for disobedience, dissolution of the bonds of human solidarity by the supremacy of self-interest and mutual antagonism. The 'sacred' in industrial religion was work, property, profit, power, even though it furthered individualism and freedom within the limits of its general principles. By transforming Christianity into a strictly patriarchal religion it was still possible to express the industrial religion in Christian terminology."*26 The creed of Industrial Religion is such that it destroys its own context -- both physical and moral. It does this by encouraging its members to dominate and exploit other members of society (both present and future). The most aggressive and ruthless members are rewarded with even more power and riches. Thus, the creed of Industrial Religion has made America's "rich people problem"*27 inevitable. ===================================== == America's "rich people problem" == ===================================== Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all warned against the excessive accumulation of capital. Franklin declared that "no man ought to own more property than needed for his livelihood,"*28 while Madison decried "the unequal and various distribution of property"*29 as the major cause of social unrest. Lincoln said that too much money in too few hands would destroy America: "The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that . . . causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. The money power of the country will endeavor to . . . work . . . upon the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed."*30 More recently, the outcry against greed was taken up by Louis Brandeis, who, before he ascended to the U. S. Supreme Court, declared forcefully that: "We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."*31 Justice Brandeis -- one of the most famous justices of all time -- clearly foresaw that too many rich people would change America from a democracy (one-citizen-one-vote), into a plutocracy (one-dollar-one-vote). Today, America's "rich people problem" has reached epidemic proportions, and while the growing numbers of homeless citizens are painfully apparent, the growing number of rich people has been less visible. In 1975, there were 4,585 millionaires in America; by 1986, the number had grown to 31,859. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis has noted, "The gap between rich and poor in America is far and away the widest in the developed world." We see the homeless every day, but we seldom see the rich because they leave their dirty work to their surrogates: the big corporations! Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams, in Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation, describe how citizens controlled corporations before the Civil War of 1861. Up to that time, corporations were chartered for a specific limited purpose (for example, building a toll road or canal) and for a specific, limited period of time (usually 20 or 30 years). Each corporation was chartered to achieve a specific social goal that a legislature decided was in the public interest. At the end of the corporation's life time, its assets were distributed among the shareholders and the corporation ceased to exist. The number of owners was limited by the charter; the amount of capital they could aggregate was also limited. The owners were personally responsible for any liabilities or debts the company incurred, including wages owed to workers. Often profits were specifically limited in the charter. Corporations were not established merely to "make a profit." Early Americans feared corporations as a threat to democracy and freedom. They feared that the owners (shareholders) would amass great wealth, control jobs and production, buy the newspapers, dominate the courts and control elections. (one-dollar-one-vote) Back in 1814, Thomas Jefferson clearly foresaw the danger of the big corporations when he said: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporation, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."*32 After the Civil War, during the 1870s and 1880s, owners and managers of corporations pressed relentlessly to expand their powers, and the courts gave them what they wanted. Perhaps the most important change occurred when the U.S. Supreme Court granted corporations the full constitutional protections of individual citizens. Congress had written the 14th Amendment to the constitution to protect the rights of freed slaves, but the court in 1886 declared that no state shall deprive a corporation ". . . of life, liberty or property without due process of law." "There was no history, logic or reason given to support that view," U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was to write 60 years later. But it was done anyway. By applying the 14th Amendment to corporations, the court struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws that were enacted to protect people from corporate harm. By the early 20th century, courts had limited the liability of shareholders; corporations had been given perpetual life times; the number of owners was no longer restricted; the capital they could control was infinite. Some corporations were given the power of eminent domain (the right to take another's private property with minimal compensation to be determined by the courts). Of course, a corporation cannot be jailed. It cannot even be fined in any real sense; when a fine is imposed, it is the shareholders who must pay it. In effect, the U. S. Supreme Court bestowed natural rights on un-natural creatures, amoral beasts that were created to serve selfish men. Now corporations had life and liberty (but no morals), and the fears of the early Americans were soon realized. =========================================================== ==="Form determines content. Corporations are machines." == =========================================================== In The Absence of the Sacred, advertising executive and economist Jerry Mander uncovers the true nature of corporations: "The corporation is not as subject to human control as most people believe it is; rather, it is an autonomous technical structure that behaves by a system of logic uniquely well suited to its primary function: to give birth and impetus to profitable new technological forms, and to spread techno-logic around the globe. "We usually become aware of corporate behavior only when a flagrant transgression is reported in the news: the dumping of toxic wastes, the releasing of pollutants, the suppression of research regarding health effects of various products, the tragic mechanical breakdowns such as at Three Mile Island, in Bhopal, or in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Sometimes we become concerned about a large corporation closing a factory, putting 5,000 people out of work, and moving to another country. "Even when we hear such news, our tendency is to respond as if the behaviors described stem from the people within the corporate structure -- people who are irresponsible, dishonest, greedy, or overly ambitious. Or else we attribute the problem to the moral decline of the times we live in, or to the failure of the regulatory process. "Seeing corporate behavior as rooted in the people who work within them is like believing that the problems of television are attributable solely to its program content. With corporations, as with television, the basic problems are actually structural. They are problems inherent in the forms and rules by which these entities are compelled to operate. If the problems could be traced to the personnel involved, they could be solved by changing the personnel. Unfortunately, however, all employees are obligated to act in concert, to behave in accordance with corporate form and corporate law. If someone attempted to revolt against these tenets, it would only result in the corporation throwing the person out, and replacing that person with another who would act according to the rules. Form determines content. Corporations are machines."*33 Corporations -- by their very structure -- are forced to exhibit Mander's eleven inherent rules of behavior: The Profit Imperative, The Growth Imperative, Competition and Aggression, Amorality, Hierarchy, Quantification, Linearity and Segmentation, Dehumanization, Exploitation, Ephemerality, Opposition to Nature, and Homogenization. "Form determines content. Corporations are machines."*34 Corporations do not "need" such things as clean air, justice, truth, beauty or love to survive. The only thing that large for-profit corporations "need" to survive is PROFIT. It is impossible for these corporations to forego significant monetary profits for moral reasons. If managers sacrifice significant profits to save important natural ecosystems or a community's quality of life, they may be fired and/or subject to stockholder litigation. Management must bend itself to the corporate will and that will is to enrich the rich. Today, the richest 1 percent of America's families controls 28 percent of the nation's wealth and 60 percent of the nation's corporate stock.*35 (one-dollar-one-vote) Thus, a large corporation may be seen as a man-made life form, a beast with a will of its own: an "economic cyborg." Visualize a powerful creature that has humans for talons, a bank vault for a heart, computers for eyes and an insatiable need for PROFIT. The economic cyborg -- a "terminator" -- a machine in human disguise! Economic cyborgs ingest natural materials (including people) in one end, and excrete un-natural products and waste (including worn-out people) out the other. Cyborgs have no innate morals to keep them from seducing our politicians, subverting our democratic processes or lying in order to achieve their own selfish objectives. Moreover, cyborgs are only nominally controlled by laws, because the people who make our laws are in turn controlled by these same cyborgs.*36 Today in America, we live under the de facto plutocracy of the economic cyborgs. (one-dollar-one-vote) ======================= == To have or to be? == ======================= In To Have or To Be, Erich Fromm explains two fundamentally different modes of existence: the Having mode, dedicated to material possession and property, aggressiveness and personal gain; and the Being mode, suffused with love, the spirit of caring for ourselves and nature, and cooperation. "Because the society we live in is devoted to acquiring property and making a profit, we rarely see any evidence of the being mode of existence and most people see the having mode as the most natural mode of existence, even the only acceptable way of life. All of which makes it especially difficult for people to comprehend the nature of the being mode, and even to understand that having is only one possible orientation. Nevertheless, these two concepts are rooted in human experience. "The alternative of having versus being does not appeal to common sense. To have, so it would seem, is a normal function of our life: in order to live we must have things. Moreover, we must have things in order to enjoy them. In a culture in which the supreme goal is to have -- and to have more and more -- and which one can speak of someone as 'being worth a million dollars,' how can there be an alternative between having and being? On the contrary, it would seem that the very essence of being is having; that if one has nothing, one is nothing. "Yet the great Masters of Living have made the alternative between having and being a central issue of their respective systems. The Buddha teaches that in order to arrive at the highest stage of human development, we must not crave possessions. Jesus teaches: 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?' (Luke 9:24-25). Master Eckhart taught that to have nothing and make oneself open and 'empty,' not to let one's ego stand in one's way, is the condition for achieving spiritual wealth and strength."*37 Religious historian Robert Bellah agrees with Fromm, "That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to humankind, but it is preached incessantly by every American television set."*38 We can see how Industrial Religion demands that we reject of all other religions and philosophies. ============================================================ == Consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded == ============================================================ At the dawn of the age of American affluence that began after World War II, retailing analyst Victor Lebow proclaimed: "Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."*39 Thus we were made to understand that the way to spiritual happiness was through consumption -- and consume we did! The American economy of the 1950s was the engine of mass production. America's large corporations flooded the country with products. In fact, consumerism was even seen as a patriotic duty.*40 "Economic salvation, both national and personal, has nothing to do with pinching pennies," declared a 1953 advertisement for Gimbles' New York department store. "If you want to have more cake tomorrow, you have to eat more cake today. The more you consume, the more you'll have, quicker."*41 "If you switch on your radio or television, or open your paper, corporations speak to you. They do it through public relations and through advertising. American corporations spend more than $100 billion yearly on advertising, which is far more than is spent on all secondary education in this country. In some ways corporate advertising is the dominant educational institution in our country, surely in the realm of lifestyle."*42 In The Overworked American, Harvard Professor of Economics Juliet B. Schor says: "Four billion square feet of our total land area has been converted into shopping centers, or about 16 square feet for every American man, woman, and child. . . . Most homes are virtual retail outlets, with cable shopping channels, mail-order catalogues, toll-free numbers and computer hookups. We can shop during lunch hour, from the office. We can shop while traveling, from the car. We can even shop in the airport, where video monitors have been installed for immediate on-screen purchasing."*43 Like an alcoholic sobering-up after a 40 year drinking binge, we sober-up to find that our consumption binge has not made us happier! Why are we surprised? Almost 40 years ago, the distinguished psychoanalyst Erich Fromm pointed out that our economic system had alienated us from ourselves, from our fellow humans, and from nature: "Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent -- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim -- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead. "What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are essentially those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action. While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch as the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfactions of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men . . . . Man's happiness today consists in 'having fun.' Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and 'taking in' commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies -- all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones -- and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and consumption."*44 In fact, regular surveys by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago reveal that the number of Americans who report they are "very happy" is no more than in 1957. Despite near-doublings in both gross national product and personal consumption expenditures per capita, the "very happy" share of the population has stayed around one-third since the mid-50s.*45 Studies indicate that the main determinants of happiness in life are not related to consumption at all. These determinants are satisfaction with family life (especially marriage), followed by satisfaction with work, and leisure to develop talents and friendships. Oxford University psychologist Michael Argyles's comprehensive work The Psychology of Happiness concludes: "The conditions of life which really make a difference to happiness are those covered by three sources -- social relations, work and leisure. And the establishment of a satisfying state of affairs in these spheres does not depend much on wealth, either absolute or relative."*46 In The Poverty of Affluence, clinical psychologist Paul Wachtel argues that economic growth does not work for us the way we think it does. Having more and more does not really leave us feeling more and more fulfilled. Wachtel says that we are a society of un-happy neurotics. In fact, our frantic pursuit of growth ends up working against the attainment of secure and lasting satisfaction. "It is ironic that the very kind of thinking which produces all our riches also renders them unable to satisfy us. Our restless desire for more and more has been a major dynamic for economic growth, but it has made the achievement of that growth largely a hollow victory. Our sense of contentment and satisfaction is not a simple result of any absolute level of what we acquire or achieve. It depends upon our frame of reference, on how what we attain compares to what we expected. If we get farther than we expected we tend to feel good. If we expected to go farther than we have then even a rather high level of success can be experienced as disappointing. In America, we keep upping the ante. Our expectations keep accommodating to what we have attained. 'Enough' is always just over the horizon, and like the horizon it recedes as we approach it. "It is not the achievement of lives of pleasure and security I oppose; it is the illusion that the path to such a life must be lined with factories spewing smoke and billboards stirring envy and insatiable desire. A rich material life is in our grasp, and I hold no brief for poverty. But riches that do not yield satisfaction are worthless. By failing to understand our experience we make ourselves poorer than we need to be."*47 Pulitzer Prize-winner Jonathan Freedman says that "once some minimal income is attained, the amount of money you have matters little in terms of bringing happiness. Above the poverty level, the relationship between income and happiness is remarkably small."*48 The celebrated anthropologist Gregory Bateson tells us that "In biology there are no values which have the characteristic that if something is good, then more of that something will be better. Economists seem to think that this is true of money but, if they are right, money is shown to be certainly unbiological and perhaps antibiological. For the rest, good things come in optima, not maxima."*49 In Mind and Nature, Bateson goes even further: "It is even possible that when we consider money, not by itself, but acting on human beings who own it, we may find that money, too, becomes toxic beyond a certain point. In any case, the philosophy of money, the set of presuppositions by which money is supposedly better and better the more you have of it, is totally antibiological. It seems, nevertheless, that this philosophy can be taught to living things."*50 The noted historian Lewis Mumford believed that society is dehumanized by technological culture and that it must return to a perspective placing emotions, sensitivity, and ethics at the heart of civilization. Here's his opinion on money fetishism: "The desire for limitless quantities of money has as little relevance to the welfare of the human organism as the stimulation of the 'pleasure center' that scientific experimenters have recently found in the brain. The stimulus is subjectively so rewarding, apparently, that animals under observation willingly forgo every other need or activity, to the point of starvation, in order to enjoy it."*51 The British economist, John Maynard Keynes, has profoundly influenced the economic policies of many governments since World War II, and many consider his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money one of the most significant theoretical works of the 20th century. Here he calls "love of money" a "disgusting morbidity": "The love of money as a possession -- as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -- will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease."*52 In fact, most Americans agree that money is not the only measure of happiness. A 1990 Fortune magazine poll found that few Americans consider money the best yardstick for evaluating what their lives are truly worth. Only 20 percent of Americans say money adequately measures happiness in their lives. Many more Americans consider enjoyable work (86 percent), happy children (84 percent), or a good marriage (69 percent) to be more important than money.*53 ================================ == The spiral of un-happiness == ================================ It's not as though happiness were a big mystery. It's not as though we don't know what people "need" to make them happy. Psychologist Abraham Maslow devised a six-level hierarchy of motives that, according to his theory, determine human behavior. Maslow ranks human needs as follows: (1) physiological; (2) security and safety; (3) love and feelings of belonging; (4) competence, prestige, and esteem; (5) self-fulfillment; and (6) curiosity and the need to understand. Maslow's election to the presidency of the American Psychological Association in 1967, suggests that his work is of great interest to psychologists. Perhaps in part because of the optimism and compassion Maslow expresses, his theory has become immensely popular and has a large following.*54 Maslow says that humans will instinctively pursue what they need to be happy. The essential problem is that our instinct is easily overwhelmed by habit and societal forces.*55 For example, clever diversions (such as advertising) by the economic cyborgs easily divert our pursuit of happiness away from basic needs and focus our attention on more new wants. Maslow says that Freud's greatest discovery is that the cause of so much psychological illness and un-happiness is the fear of knowledge of ourselves -- of our emotions, impulses, memories, capacities and destiny (death). This kind of fear is defensive; it is protection of our self-esteem, of our love and respect for ourselves. But this fear of knowledge of ourselves also keeps us from discriminating between our wants and needs. This in turn has led the rich and powerful to develop an aggressive, hedonistic society focused upon wants. Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, they have called forth demonic economic cyborgs from the nether world that have trapped us in a downward spiral of un-happiness. How have the cyborgs trapped us? We are driven by basic human needs, yet our fear-of-knowing makes it difficult to distinguish exactly what it is that we do need; clever mind-domination (advertising) by the cyborgs diverts our attention to new wants; television creates hostility in us by causing us to feel inferior and also by showing violent programs. This in turn motivates us to satisfy our new wants;*56, *57 satisfying our new wants does nothing to satisfy our original basic needs (in fact, we divert limited resources that might address our basic needs). Economic competition to earn more money generates more fear;*58 collapsing social and physical environments frighten us even more; and these in turn add more spin to our spiral of un-happiness. . . . We are beginning to see how making people un-happy is good for cyborg PROFIT. The more un-happy and hostile people become, the more likely they are to be motivated by advertising to purchase things they don't need. This ability of advertising to separate people from their needs (and their money), is what gives advertising its value. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "In a way, the world-view of the party imposed itself most successfully on the people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding, they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just like a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird." -- George Orwell, 1984 ======================================== == A nation of mentally ill consumers == ======================================== Widespread symptoms of mental illness in America were documented in 1937 by psychologist Karen Horney. She was dean of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, which she helped to found in 1941, and a professor at New York Medical College in 1942. That her work is considered viable is evidenced by the establishment (in 1955) of the Karen Horney Clinic in New York City. In more recent years, the Clinic has expanded to become a training center for analysts.*59 In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, she described neurotic personalities produced by the social difficulties existing in that time and culture. She found that our aggressiveness, desire for material goods and expectations for unlimited freedom had turned us into a society of antisocial and frustrated neurotics. "If, however, power, prestige and possession have to be acquired by the individual's own efforts he is compelled to enter into competitive struggle with others. From its economic center competition radiates into all other activities and permeates love, social relations and play. Therefore competition is a problem for everyone in our culture, and it is not at all surprising to find it an unfailing center of neurotic conflicts."*60 Our mental illness became more apparent during World War II when one out of every five young men (nearly five million) was rejected for military service because of mental illness. (Of the one million additional men accepted for service that were later discharged with a disability, 43 percent had neuropsychiatric problems.) The frequency of emotional disturbance in our culture was even more dramatically demonstrated in the Midtown Manhattan Study conducted by Srole in 1962. In this research, residents in a section of New York were randomly sampled. Over 1,600 persons filled out a detailed questionnaire concerning the severity of their past and present symptoms. The researchers found that fewer than one in four persons was "well" and nearly one in five was "incapacitated" by emotional disorder.*61 A National Institute of Mental Health survey, conducted between 1980 and 1985, estimated approximately 28 percent of American adults (45 million) suffer from mental disorders or drug abuse, or a combination of both. "Phobias affected 10.9 percent of the participants . . . Another 7.4 percent reported alcohol abuse or dependence, 5.4 percent reported dysthymia (mild depression), 5 percent cited severe depression, 3.1 percent suffered nonalcohol drug disorders, and 2.1 percent reported obsessive-compulsive disorder. Other disorders occurred in 8 percent of the population."*62 What do we do when we are un-happy? Horney reminds us that by buying things, we temporarily mitigate our feelings of helplessness, insignificance, humiliation and dependence on others.63 In other words, we mitigate the symptoms of our un-happiness with material consumption while we remain blind to the underlying causes of our un-happiness. In fact, discontent is required. "An economy primarily driven by growth must generate discontent. We cannot be content or the entire economic machine would grind to a halt."*64 In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley describes how motivation analysts use our subconscious fears to trap us: "In every case the motivation analyst has found some deep-seated wish or fear, whose energy can be used to move the consumer to part with cash and so, indirectly, to turn the wheels of industry. Stored in the minds and bodies of countless individuals, this potential energy is released by, and transmitted along, a line of symbols carefully laid out so as to bypass rationality and obscure the real issue." In Media Sexploitation, Professor of Journalism Wilson Key explains how women's sexual fears are exploited for PROFIT: "Women are carefully trained by media to view themselves as inadequate. They are taught that other women -- through the purchases of clothes, cosmetics, food, vocations, avocations, education, etc. -- are more desirable and feminine than themselves. Her need to constantly reverify her sexual adequacy though the purchase of merchandise becomes an overwhelming preoccupation, profitable for the merchandisers, but potentially disastrous for the individual. "North American society has a vested interest in reinforcing an individual's failure to achieve sexual maturity. By exploiting unconscious fears, forcing them to repress sexual taboos, the media guarantees blind repressed seeking for value substitutes through commercial products and consumption. Sexual repression, as reinforced by the media, is a most viable marketing technology. "Repressed sexual fear, much like all types of repression, makes humans highly vulnerable to subliminal management and control technology. Through subliminal appeals and reinforcements of these fears, some consumers can be induced into buying almost anything."*65 Now we can see that a life of hostility, violence, anxiety and fear is required for the economic cyborgs; the un-happiness in our society is no accident -- making people un-happy is necessary for PROFITS. Un-happiness is required! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." -- George Orwell, 1984 ======================= == Electronic heroin == ======================= Broadcasting evolved from electronic communication through wires (hence the term wireless, frequently used in the early years of radio). The roots of broadcasting technology lie in the development of the telegraph (1844) by the American inventor Samuel Morse and of the telephone (1876) by the Scottish-American inventor Alexander Graham Bell. Although the telephone evolved into a means of private two-way communication, some early critics feared it would be used primarily in conjunction with a central station that could transmit propaganda into private houses and disrupt the sanctity of the home. If those early critics could only see us now! Mass propaganda has become the stock and trade of modern totalitarian governments. At his trial after World War II, Hitler's Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, delivered a long speech in which he described Hitler's methods: "Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. . . . Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has arisen the new type of the uncritical receipt of orders."*66 In the Plug-In Drug, Marie Winn says that television is a type of addictive drug: "When we think about addiction to drugs or alcohol we frequently focus on negative aspects, ignoring the pleasures that accompany drinking or drug-taking. And yet the essence of any serious addiction is a pursuit of pleasure, a search for a 'high' that normal life does not supply. It is only the inability to function without the addictive substance that is dismaying, the dependence of the organism upon a certain experience and an increasing inability to function normally without it. Thus people will take two or three drinks at the end of the day not merely for the pleasure drinking provides, but also because they 'don't feel normal' without them. "Real addicts do not merely pursue a pleasurable experience one time in order to function normally. They need to repeat it again and again. Something about that particular experience makes life without it less than complete. Other potentially pleasurable experiences are no longer possible, for under the spell of the addictive experience, their lives are peculiarly distorted. The addict craves an experience and yet is never really satisfied. The organism may be temporarily sated, but soon it begins to crave again. "Finally, a serious addiction is distinguished from a harmless pursuit of pleasure by its distinctly destructive elements. Heroin addicts, for instance, lead a damaged life: their increasing need for heroin in increasing doses prevents them from working, from maintaining relationships, from developing in human ways. Similarly alcoholics' lives are narrowed and dehumanized by their dependence on alcohol. "Let us consider television viewing in the light of the conditions that define serious addictions. "Not unlike drugs or alcohol, the television experience allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality are as effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a 'trip' induced by drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only vaguely aware of their addiction, feeling that they control their drinking more than they really do ('I can cut it out any time I want -- I just like to have three of four drinks before dinner'), people similarly overestimate their control over television watching. Even as they put off other activities to spend hour after hour watching television, they feel they could easily resume living in a different, less passive style. But somehow or other, while the television set is present in their homes, the click doesn't sound. With television pleasures available, those other experiences seem less attractive, more difficult somehow. "Finally it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the lives of so many people that defines it as a serious addiction. The television habit distorts the sense of time. It renders other experiences vague and curiously unreal while taking on a greater reality for itself. It weakens relationships by reducing and sometimes eliminating normal opportunities for talking, for communicating."*67 According to the Washington Post, Terence McKenna's Food of the Gods "Deserves to be the modern classic on mind-altering drugs and hallucinogens." In this modern classic, McKenna convinces us that television is emotionally equivalent to heroin: "The nearest analogy to the addictive power of television and the transformation of values that is wrought in the life of the heavy user is probably heroin. Heroin flattens the image; with heroin, things are neither hot nor cold; the junkie looks out at the world certain that what ever it is, it does not matter. The illusion of knowing and of control that heroin engenders is analogous to the unconscious assumption of the television consumer that what is seen is 'real' somewhere in the world. In fact, what is seen are the cosmetically enhanced surfaces of products. Television, while chemically non-invasive, nevertheless is every bit as addicting and physiologically damaging as any other drug. "Most unsettling of all is this: the content of television is not a vision but a manufactured data stream that can be sanitized to 'protect' or impose cultural values. Thus we are confronted with an addictive and all-pervasive drug that delivers an experience whose message is whatever those who deal the drug wish it to be. Could anything provide a more fertile ground for fostering fascism and totalitarianism than this? In the United States, there are many more televisions than households, the average television set is on six hours a day, and the average person watches more than five hours a day -- nearly one-third of their waking time. Aware as we all are of these simple facts, we seem unable to react to their implications. Serious study of the effects of television on health and culture has only begun recently. Yet no drug in history has so quickly or completely isolated the entire culture of its users from contact with reality. And no drug in history has so completely succeeded in remaking in its own image the values of the culture that it has infected. "Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coercion, brainwashing, and manipulation. Television induces a trance state in the viewer that is the necessary precondition for brainwashing. As with all other drugs and technologies, television's basic character cannot be changed; television is no more reformable than is the technology that produces automatic assault rifles."*68 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice." -- George Orwell, 1984 ================================= == Our "dysfunctional" society == ================================= Vice President Gore has described our society as "dysfunctional."*69 Like the unwritten rules of a dysfunctional family, the unwritten rules that govern our relationship to our society have been passed down from generation to generation. And, as in a dysfunctional family, the first rule in a dysfunctional society is that no one questions the rules. In fact, there is a powerful psychological reason not to question the rules. Children are so completely dependent that they cannot afford even to think there is something wrong with the parent, even if the rules do not feel right or make sense. Since children cannot bear to suspect that the all-powerful parent is the source of their dysfunctionality, they assume the problem is within themselves. This is the crucial moment when the psychological wound is inflicted, when children suffer a fundamental loss of faith in themselves. Just as children blame themselves for their family's dysfunctionality, we passively blame ourselves for the failure of our society to provide a feeling of community and a shared sense of purpose in life. And just as children cannot reject their parents, we are too frightened to reject our society by questioning the rules. Instead, we choose to pass our lives plugged into our electronic heroin and quietly spiral downward into oblivion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." -- George Orwell, 1984 ========================= == Profitable violence == ========================= All over the world, physiologists, critics of the arts, government leaders, and people in the industry itself have become concerned about the high percentage of violence shown on television. Studies show that television violence tends to make watchers more aggressive and violent. On June 25, 1993, cable network magnate Ted Turner testified before the House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications Subcommittee "As a parent with five children, I don't need experts to tell me that the amount of violence on television today and its increasingly graphic portrayal can be harmful to children." He went on to say that "Television violence is the single most significant factor contributing to violence in America."*70 "More than 3,000 studies have been conducted in the past four decades showing a consistent correlation between 'viewing violence and aggressive behavior,' according to a recent American Psychological Association (APA) report. By the time a child has finished elementary school, he will have seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence, the APA estimated. In addition to aggressive behavior, children also develop increased fearfulness of becoming a victim, and become more callous about violence directed at others, said a recent report by CQ Researcher. For years the entertainment industry maintained that the content of movies and television reflects society more than it influences it. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) has worked for eight years to get the networks to acknowledge that 'inappropriate' violence is bad."*71 Brandon Centerwall, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, has linked the doubling of murder rates among white populations in three countries to television viewing. "In later life, serious violence is most likely to erupt at moments of severe stress -- and it is precisely at such moments that adolescents and adults are most likely to revert to their earliest, most visceral sense of the role of violence in society and in personal behavior. Much of this sense will have come from television."*72 Beyond the overwhelming evidence that watching television incites violence, there seem to be other effects that are just as alarming. People who watch a large amount of violence on television tend to become emotionally passive to real acts of violence inflicted on others.*73 Economist and advertising executive Jerry Mander says that television advertising is "designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering with thinking patterns." It is used by people who enjoy dominating others and are good at it. Thus, the basic nature of advertising and all technologies created to serve it will tend to transform natural thinking patterns into social mutations. "If we take the word 'need' to mean something basic to human survival -- food, shelter, clothing -- or basic to human contentment -- peace, love, safety, companionship, intimacy, a sense of fulfillment -- these will be sought and found by people whether or not there is advertising. In fact, advertising intervenes between people and their needs, separates them from direct fulfillment and urges them to believe that satisfaction can be obtained only though commodities. It is through this intervention and separation that advertising can create value, thereby justifying its existence."*74 Mander makes a convincing argument that television deadens our intellect, alienates us from other human beings, dominates us with Orwellian mind control techniques and has made us unable to understand the difference between real experience and the flickering images on a TV screen: "If people were believing that an image of nature was equal to or even similar to the experience of nature, and were therefore satisfied enough with the image that they did not seek out the real experience, then nature was in a lot bigger trouble than anyone realized."*75 The authors of The Great Reckoning argue that the most insidious effect of television may be the fact that it "drowns out abstraction" for the uneducated. By asserting the primacy of the visual over the abstract in the mass culture, television is actually remaking the modern mind. Television is a medium of images; it enables people to see, but discourages them from taking an interest in what cannot be seen. In effect, people lose the ability to understand complex ideas.*76 Orwell saw it coming 50 years ago! Every night, there are hundreds of millions of alienated, isolated humans sitting in the dark, becoming more violent and losing the ability to understand that which cannot be seen -- all for PROFIT! Mander is right, nature is in a lot more trouble than we realize! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "There was a vast amount of criminality in London, a whole-world-within-a-world of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug peddlers, and racketeers of every description; but since it all happened among the proles themselves, it was of no importance." -- George Orwell, 1984 =========================== == Justifiable homicide? == =========================== It has been said that more people have been killed because of religion than any other cause. This is certainly true when one considers Industrial Religion. For example, cigarette smoking causes about 435,000 American deaths each year. During the last 40 years, roughly 17 million Americans have been killed by tobacco smoke while tobacco companies have pocketed something like a thousand billion dollars.*77 Tobacco company apologists will argue that the victims willingly lined up for the slaughter. However, if advertising alters one's judgment and interferes with free will, weren't the tobacco companies the proximate cause of most of those deaths? If there were no cigarette advertising or manufacturing, how many victims would have died? There are many other deadly economic interests besides tobacco: "We are a culture that assumes the benefits of progress. We still look to new machines, new chemicals, and new techniques as the primary means to improve our condition -- despite the fact that they are harming us in increasing numbers: In 1900, cancer accounted for only three percent of the total deaths in the United States. Since the introduction of thousands of new chemicals beginning in the 1940s -- pesticides, herbicides, radiation, artificial hormones, food additives, toxic wastes, industrial chemicals, and toxic building materials -- one in three Americans contracts the disease."*78 The petrochemical industry discharges roughly 200 million tons of hazardous wastes into our environment each year. Since about 1988, publications of the scientific mainstream have emphasized that chemicals are causing reproductive and immune system damage in wildlife, laboratory animals and humans. Recently, it has been learned that many common industrial chemicals mimic hormones and thus interfere with the fundamental cell chemistry of birds, fish and mammals (remember that we humans are mammals).*79 A report published by the National Research Council titled, Environmental Neurotoxicity, said "There is convincing evidence that chemicals in the environment can alter the function of the nervous system." The report suggested that chemical exposures may be responsible for some degenerative brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Lou Gehrig's disease.*80 We have no way of calculating the millions of cancers, birth defects, and other crippling conditions that have been caused by the 70,000 different chemicals now in commercial use. In Making Peace with the Planet, Barry Commoner argues that our current practice of environmental protection is a return to the medieval approach to disease, when illness and death were regarded as a debt that must be paid for original sin. Today, this medieval philosophy is recast in a modern form: some level of pollution and some risk to health are the unavoidable prices that must be paid for the material benefits of modern technology. For example, here is Time magazine's response to the appalling deaths in the chemical accident in Bhopal India: "The citizens of Bhopal lived near the Union Carbide plant because they sought to live there. The plant provided jobs, and pesticide [provided] more food. Bhopal was a modern parable of the risks and rewards originally engendered by the industrial Revolution . . . . There is no avoiding that hazard, and no point in trying; one only trusts that the gods of the machines will give a good deal more than they take away. . . ."*81 Like the medieval priests who accepted the Black Death as the "will of God," Time says that the reason more than five thousand people were killed, and thousands more were blinded and maimed was because the victims owed it to the gods of the machines! How touching! Time ends with a prayer to the gods of the machines that the economic good will somehow outweigh the human tragedy! Did Time consider the possibility that the economic good accrued to different individuals than those who had been forced to pay the debt? Does it make any difference if 99% of the people pay the costs while only 1% of the people get the benefits? When economists calculate cost/benefit ratios, do they just throw all the poor people into one big pot -- like so many pounds of meat? Were those people who were killed, blinded and maimed asked if the economic benefits outweighed the costs? Will the deformed babies born to Bhopal mothers be considered an economic benefit because of the staggering medical costs? At an October 1992 news conference, Vladimir Pokrovsky, head of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, shocked the world: "We have doomed ourselves for the next 25 years." He added: "The new generation is entering adult life unhealthy. The Soviet economy was developed at the expense of the population's health." Data released by the Academy show that 11 percent of Russian infants are suffering from birth defects and 55 percent of the school-age children suffer heath problems. The Academy also reported that the increase in illness and early death among those aged 25-40 was particularly distressing.*82 Economists have developed several ingenious ways of solving financial dilemmas that involve killing people (remember that economists "abolished the moral problem"). Placing a dollar value on human life means that untimely death is rational and quantified. Thus, the economic cyborgs can kill legally (a new meaning to justifiable homicide). This raises many fascinating questions: are rich people worth more than poor, are whites worth more than blacks, are young worth more than old, men worth more than women, is there a discount for cripples, are economists worth more than housewives? It is clear that there are enough calculations here to generate a lot more economic benefits by employing a whole army of economists for quite some time. Can we use these additional economic benefits to kill a few more people? Wait a minute -- doesn't that presuppose that people are the property of the state -- isn't that fascism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To the Party, "power is not a means to an end; it is the end in itself. To the Party, power means the capacity to inflict unlimited pain and suffering on another human being." For the Party, power creates reality, it creates truth. -- George Orwell, 1984 =================================== == We do not belong to the state == =================================== In America, the people do not belong to the state. America was not founded upon collective rights, it was founded upon God-given, individual human rights -- but many people have either forgotten or never knew. For example, Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi recently told Kona Rotary Club members: "I don't believe 125,000 people on this island should make the decision of what is best for this state. The spaceport is necessary and has to be done." In other words, Fasi says that the rights of the entire population of Hawaii county should be sacrificed to the state. The sentiment expressed by Fasi is not one that we often hear in America -- it sounds strange. What kind of philosophy is this? Is it Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Marxist or what? The idea that the people belong to the state is called fascism. When Fasi makes that kind of statement, he is preaching the doctrine of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Here is Fasi's philosophy as articulated by Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism: "Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and the individual within the State. The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist State -- a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values -- interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people." Frank Fascist? Frankito Fasolini? Voter beware! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself." -- George Orwell, 1984 ======================================= == Divide and conquer for "progress" == ======================================= Divide and conquer is a tactic used by economic cyborgs to further their own selfish economic interests. Since the cyborgs destroy natural ecosystems for profit, they are able to exploit a natural division in our community: the division between the labor and environmental movements. These tactics can be quite successful with labor being portrayed as being "for progress" while environmentalists are portrayed as being "against progress." One never asks: progress towards what? Despite the intense economic development of the last 20 years, what exactly has progressed? Who claims that our schools, infrastructure, economic security or taxes are any better? Why would any rational individual want any more of this progress? For example, common sense tells us that those who are developing our county for profit should pay the public infrastructure costs (roads, water, schools, etc.) that are associated with their profit-making projects. It is clearly unfair to force the tax-paying residents to subsidize private developers (it's welfare for the rich). But in the past, passing infrastructure costs along to the public has been a favorite way for politicians to help their rich developer pals maximize their profits. A 1990 report, issued by the Hawaii County Public Works Department, lists a total of $558 million worth of planned projects. Yet the county's budget for this infrastructure is only about $4 million per year. In other words, we are over 100 years behind in our county infrastructure and county tax-payers of this county owe an infrastructure debt of $558 million! How far behind are we in state projects? Is this stupidity or corruption? Furthermore, have these past 20 years of economic development improved the economic condition of the working class? Hardly! Despite this intense development, real income has declined precipitously. Isn't this un-economic development? Do we really want more of the same? If you don't believe that our government has sold out the working class people, consider these long-term economic trends as articulated by Hawaii's Special Assistant to the Governor for Economic Affairs, Gregory G. Y. Pai, Ph.D.: "To begin with, we are all aware of the transformation of Hawaii from an agrarian plantation society into a tourist-oriented service economy during the roughly three decades since Hawaii became a state. In spite of the unprecedented economic growth and prosperity that resulted, an important consequence was that the labor force was transformed from one primarily craft and skill oriented to one predominantly sales and service oriented. Because of the historically lower wages paid to trade and service jobs, the result was a long-term decline in wage and income growth in the state. By 1982, Hawaii's rank in terms in annual wages paid per employee had dropped to 42nd in the nation. Given Hawaii's traditionally high cost of living, the result was greater pressures on families in the struggle for economic survival. In the two decades between 1969 and 1989, the median income of households in Hawaii, adjusted for inflation, increased by 43 percent from $27,094 to $38,829. However, the consumer price index for Honolulu, which measures price increases for household expenditures such as food, clothing, shelter, energy, transportation, and medical care grew by 227 percent during the same period. Thus, the costs of living in Hawaii, in the last two decades, grew at a rate five times faster than the growth in income for Hawaii households. Analysis of 1990 Census data also reveal a trend toward an increased bi-modal distribution of household income. In short, the rich have continued to get richer while the poor have gotten poorer. "This deterioration in economic welfare for Hawaii's families is graphically reflected in long-term statistics on social welfare expenditures. Despite the impressive growth in Hawaii's overall economy, total state government social welfare spending increased dramatically from $24 million in 1967 to $434 million in 1990. Individuals receiving social welfare payments doubled from 22,400 to 52,000 persons. Between 1969 and 1990, recipients of aid to families with dependent children, child-welfare foster care, and general welfare assistance grew from 7,073 to 33,652 cases, while the level of monthly payments increased from $14 million to $176 million. In the meantime, households receiving food increased from 1,500 to 32,000, while the annual value of food stamps distributed rose from one million dollars to $79 million."*83 Contrary to popular belief, environmentalist goals are not intrinsically incompatible with labor. "We want safe jobs and a clean environment," states Edwin Ruff of the New York State AFL-CIO and a member of the New York State Labor & Environment Network, "We can do that together." "Ultimately, if we destroy the environment, we destroy everyone's jobs," said Lynn Williams, International President of the United Steelworkers of America, and the keynote speaker at New York's Annual Labor & Environment Conference. "Toxic chemicals that disturb the community outside the plant come from inside the workplace, where workers are under a much greater threat. People don't have to die for their jobs."*84 The following is part of an article published by the United Auto Workers on Nov. 1991: "Taking on corporate America and our Republican-led federal government to improve the environment while we improve the economy is an uphill battle. The tasks are vast, the problems difficult, and the challenges unparalleled. But I am confident that with labor and environmentalists forging alliances, we will solve our environmental crisis in a way that's good for jobs and the economy." The environmentalists and organized labor in every community must join hands to fight the cyborgs. Bill Towne, of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, says, "It's always been, is it jobs or the environment first?' and now we've matured enough to where we recognize that it's both." Remember, the only thing that economic cyborgs "need" to survive is PROFIT. For profit, cyborgs will destroy natural ecosystems. For profit, cyborgs will exploit desperate workers. Thus, the goal of economic cyborgs is intrinsically incompatible with both labor and the environmentalists (indeed, all of nature). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "The Party claimed, of course, to have liberated the proles from bondage. . . . In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." -- George Orwell, 1984 ======================== == Workers are losing == ======================== History has shown us that the cyborgs' behavior can only be made socially responsible by coercion such that as used by the early labor movement. Having no political power and struggling to feed their families, desperate workers had no recourse but to take matters into their own hands. Organize. Strike! Settle. Once labor was able to organize and gain political power, its hard-fought gains (that were bought and paid for with blood) were finally enacted into law. For example, Industrial Workers of the World was a union that had a dramatic impact on the early labor movement. "We are going down in the gutter," I.W.W. leader William "Big Bill" Haywood announced, "to get at the mass of workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living." During its relatively short heyday, the I.W.W. conducted numerous strikes, including a dramatic and successful textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts. The I.W.W. introduced new strike tactics, such as the sit-downs and mass picketing, and it packed some California jails by deliberately violating city ordinances.*85 Today, labor's hard-won accomplishments are being unraveled. Barlett and Steele clearly show how the cyborgs have "gone to bed" with their political cronies in order to weaken the laws that had once kept the cyborgs in check. As a result, millions of American workers have been forced to move from jobs that paid $15 an hour, into jobs that pay $7; millions are victims of mass layoffs, production halts, shuttered factories and owners who enrich themselves by doing damage and then walking away.*86 In the last twenty years, American workers' leisure time has declined steadily. Full-time workers report they have only sixteen and a half hours of leisure a week. In fact, working hours are already longer than they were forty years ago. Full-time American manufacturing employees currently work 320 more hours per year than their counterparts in West Germany or France (the equivalent of over two months). Moreover, if present trends continue, by the end of the century, Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties.*87 But while most Americans must work longer hours in order to make ends meet, many others no longer have the chance to work those longer hours. Instead, millions of average working Americans are forced to slash their pay checks so that the rich folks can get even richer. Here's an example: "The Bank of America, which reported $1.5 billion in profits last year, is planning to turn all but a handful of its 18,500 employees into part-timers. The bank plans to force tellers and other workers into working weeks shorter than 20 hours, disqualifying them for health insurance and other benefits. Pay and benefits will be slashed an average of $17,200 per year for each worker."*88 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction -- indeed, in some sense was the destruction -- of a hierarchical society. . . . For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when the had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance." -- George Orwell, 1984 =========================================================== == Ecological harmony changed into exploitive domination == =========================================================== Our secret religion -- Industrial Religion -- was born in the seventeenth century. Before the seventeenth century, the goals of science were wisdom, understanding the natural order, and living in harmony with nature. In the seventeenth century, ecological harmony changed into exploitive domination. The English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) advocated a new empirical method of science in passionate and vicious terms. Nature has to be "hounded in her wanderings," wrote Bacon, "bound into service" and made a "slave." She is to be "put in constraint," and the aim of the scientist is to "torture nature's secrets from her." These violent images of torture with mechanical devices paralleled the torture of women during the seventeenth century witch trials. This is not surprising since Bacon was attorney general for King James and torturing women was his business. Thus, we have a crucial and frightening connection between mechanistic science and patriarchal values, which had a tremendous impact on the further development of science and technology.*89 At about the same time Bacon was busy torturing women, the French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes was attempting to account for observed phenomena on the basis of what he called clear and distinct ideas. Ultimately he developed a radical philosophy predicated on the fundamental division of reality into two separate and independent realms: that of mind and that of matter. The Cartesian division allowed scientists to treat matter as material substance completely separate from themselves, and to see the material world as a multitude of different objects assembled into a huge machine. Such a mechanistic worldview was held by Isaac Newton, who constructed his mechanics on its basis and made it the foundation of classical physics. And Newton's physics became the dogma of Industrial Religion. The consequence of our devotion to Industrial Religion has been that our natural environment is treated as if it consists of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. This fragmented view is imposed upon a society that is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups. The belief that all these fragments are really separate can be seen as the essential reason for the present series of social, ecological and economic crises. It has alienated us from nature and from other human beings. It has brought a grossly unjust distribution of natural resources that is creating economic and political disorder. It has brought an ever rising wave of violence, both spontaneous and institutionalized. It has brought an ugly, polluted environment in which life has become physically and mentally unhealthy. ============================================= == Science knows nothing of "deep reality" == ============================================= "Deep reality" describes the ultimate physical laws and substances that constitute our world. The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) argued that our knowledge concerning deep reality can only be subjective (biased by the observer) because it comes to us via our senses. This subjective knowledge can only describe how reality appears to us -- a superficial sort of "apparent reality." We can know nothing of an objective deep reality via our senses. Hume's outrageous skepticism attacked the very foundations of science. Scientists knew that Hume's argument had to be refuted before they could claim to know anything at all about deep reality. The great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), rose to the challenge. Many consider Kant to be the greatest thinker since Plato and Aristotle. He was also a scientist and an enthusiastic supporter of Isaac Newton. Kant was "awakened from his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume's unacceptable argument and struggled to refute it. He failed. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate whose emphasis on logical analysis influenced the course of 20th-century philosophy. He was also a realist who believed that objects perceived by the senses have an objective reality. Russell was appalled by Hume's skepticism: "To refute him has been, ever since he wrote, a favorite pastime among metaphysicians. For my part, I find none of their refutations convincing; nevertheless, I cannot but hope that something less skeptical that Hume's system may be discoverable." Yet Hume's argument still stands after two hundred and fifty years of challenge: we can know nothing of deep reality via our senses. Modern physics (the basis of all science) has probed the depths of our physical world with mathematics, linear accelerators, bubble chambers and billions of dollars. What have modern physicists found? The giants of twentieth century physics, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg have shown us astounding new concepts of matter, space and time that are totally different from Newton's. High-energy particle scattering experiments have demonstrated that subatomic particles are not made of any physical substance. At the subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather shows "tendencies to exist," and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show "tendencies to occur." In the subatomic world, classical concepts like "elementary particle," "material substance" or "isolated object" have lost their meaning; the whole universe appears as a dynamic web of inseparable energy patterns. Bohr: "Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems." Heisenberg: "The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole." These changes in science show surprising parallels to a fundamental idea expressed in many religious philosophies -- the unity of all things. All things perceived by the senses are interrelated, connected and are different aspects of the same deep reality. Yet this deep reality cannot be directly experienced, understood or even described! Einstein on understanding: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Heisenberg on description: "Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability."*90 Hume was right: we can know nothing of deep reality via our senses. (There are probably other ways of knowing -- i.e. mysticism and intuition.) While science knows nothing of deep reality, a revolutionary new theory is showing scientists how apparent reality is inter-connected: Chaos Theory. ============================================ == The Science of Wholeness: Chaos Theory == ============================================ Chaos is the condition of being without order (confusion or noise). As Briggs and Peat show in Turbulent Mirror (1989), "The world defined by science has been a world of almost Platonic purity. The equations and theories describing the rotation of the planets, the rise of water in a tube, the trajectory of a baseball, or the structure of the genetic code contain a regularity and order, a clockwork certainty, that we have come to associate with nature's laws. . . . Turbulence, irregularity, and unpredictability are everywhere, but it has always seemed fair to assume that this was noise,' a messiness that resulted from the way things in reality crowd into each other." In other words, the chaos that scientists had observed in nature was thought to be due to poor experimental conditions. They were wrong. The source of the chaos that scientists have observed in nature is the sensitivity of all things to all other things. In one scientific article, four pioneers of chaos theory explain that the sensitivity of dynamical physical systems is so great that the perfect prediction of the effect of a cue ball striking a rack of billiard balls is impossible. "For how long could a player with perfect control over his or her stroke predict the cue ball's trajectory? If the player ignored an effect as minuscule as the gravitational attraction of an electron at the edge of the galaxy, the prediction would become wrong after one minute!" The smallest particle determines the whole. In such a world, there are no separate and distinct parts. In fact, cosmologists (those who study the origin of the universe) speculate that if the initial conditions at the big bang had varied by as much as a single quantum of energy (the smallest known thing we can measure), the universe would be a vastly different place. Modern science has clearly shown that Newton's physics is limited and defective. Yet its bastard -- Industrial Religion -- continues to lead us to violent death. Our survival demands that we discard Industrial Religion and adopt a new religion that is consistent with modern science -- one that admits uncertainty and respects the unity of all things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it." -- George Orwell, 1984 ========================================= == The brink of environmental disaster == ========================================= Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists, representing over 1,500 of the world's leading scientists (including 99 Nobel laureates), issued an Urgent Warning to Humanity: "The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and undeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair. "A new ethic is required -- a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes."*91 Pope John Paul II criticized our consumer lifestyle: "Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. In many parts of the world, society is given to instant gratification and consumerism while remaining indifferent to the damage which these cause. As I have already stated, the seriousness of the ecological issue lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis."*92 Until now, the economic cyborgs had us convinced that no matter how badly we treat ourselves or our Mother Earth, the scientific community can save us. But last year, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London admitted in a joint statement that science and technology may NOT be able to save us: "If current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world."*93 Never before in history have these two prestigious groups of scientists issued a joint statement. Concerning this unprecedented event, the president of Worldwatch Institute, Lester R. Brown, noted: "It was a remarkable statement, an admission that science and technology can no longer ensure a better future unless population growth slows quickly and the economy is restructured. . . . That they chose to issue a joint statement, their first ever, reflects a deepening concern about the future among scientists."*94 On March 18, 1993, both Germany and Holland issued urgent warnings: "All efforts now to prevent the ozone hole are too late," said the head of Germany's environmental protection office, Heinrich von Lersner. He went on to explain that German scientists are measuring a steadily decreasing layer of ozone in the sky over Europe.*95 Dutch scientists say that greenhouse effect is really here! The Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute said that the Netherlands' four warmest years of the century all fell in the last five years. This obvious climate change "fits the image of a temperature rise due to the greenhouse effect." It is no longer probable that the natural variability of a stable climate could cause so many warm years so close together, the institute added. It is the first time official Dutch meteorologists have been so clear. Until now, the run of warm weather was considered by the Dutch scientists to be statistically insignificant.*96 Botanists are saying that plants may not be able to save us from global warming: "Plants may not be able to save the world from 'global warming' as they can consume only so much carbon dioxide, scientists said in a report published on Thursday. "Argentine and British botanists found in joint experiments that too much of a good thing for plants acted just like an overdose of food in an animal -- it made them sick. "Some scientists had reported that plants exposed to extra carbon dioxide grew bigger than normal plants. This led to theories that plants could absorb the carbon dioxide, caused by burning fossil fuels, that could be behind the gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere. "But the botanists said in the science journal Nature that different plants reacted differently to overdoses of carbon dioxide. They said many of the species they tested simply dumped the excess carbon into the soil through their roots. "This, in turn, allowed micro-organisms to grow and eat up other nutrients, causing the plants to wither. "The botanists, working at Sheffield University in northern England and Cordoba National University in Argentina, said doubling carbon dioxide concentrations in the air did not cause any of their plants to grow more than usual."*97 Indonesia is beginning to panic: "Global warming will cause rising sea levels that will submerge large chunks of Indonesia in the next two decades, displacing millions of people, experts said on Thursday. "Speaking at a seminar on climatic changes, officials and environmental groups said about 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres) of arable land as well as ports, railways and homes would be under water by 2010. "Up to three million people would have to be resettled, they said, presenting a study undertaken by local environmental groups and officials with the help of the Asian Development Bank. "The report called for prompt action. "'The government alone cannot prevent or prepare for climatic change. This massive effort will require the input, energy and dedication of the Indonesian, and indeed international, society as a whole,' it concluded. "Indonesia, an archipelago that is home to about 183 million people, is one of the countries most at risk from rising sea levels. "Scientists expect global warming, caused by emissions of 'greenhouse gases' such as carbon dioxide, to raise temperatures by up to 5 Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) in the next 100 years. "Thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice will have raised sea levels by as much as 29 cm (11 inches) by 2030 and 71 cm (28 inches) by 2070, eroding and flooding coastlines. "Indonesia's report, concluding a year-long study, said that apart from submerged land, damage to other soil would reduce yields on upland crops by as much as 40 percent, costing about $6 billion annually. "The team called for immediate action, suggesting that the government build dams, canals and ponds to protect against increasing floods as well as constructing homes for those forced to leave inundated areas. "The islands most affected would be densely populated Java, Irian Jaya, Sumatra, the Indonesian half of Borneo and Sulawesi. "Officials at the one-day seminar acknowledged the problem of rising water levels and called for concerted global action. "In a speech to the seminar, the minister of the environment, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, said even a slight rise in sea levels would cause chaos in the form of worsening health, declining agricultural production and widespread starvation. "World experts will discuss the problem of rising sea levels at a November meeting in the Netherlands, which rebuilt its seawater defenses after nearly 2,000 people drowned four decades ago."*98 ==================================== == The brink of economic disaster == ==================================== The cyborgs keep the profits generated from their destructive money-making activities, while all of society is forced to pay the costs. It's as though only the richest one percent of the people have credit cards but the bill must be divided and paid by everyone. In State of the World 1993, Brown points out that our economic way of thinking is killing us: "Industrial firms are allowed to internalize profits while externalizing costs, passing on to society such expenses as those for health care associated with polluted air or those from global warming. "An expanding economy based on such an incomplete accounting system would be expected to slowly undermine itself, eventually collapsing as support systems are destroyed. And that is just what is happening. The environmentally destructive activities of recent decades are now showing in reduced productivity of croplands, forests, grasslands, and fisheries; in the mounting cleanup costs of toxic waste sites; in rising health care costs for cancer, birth defects, allergies, emphysema, asthma, and other respiratory diseases; and the spread of hunger. "The bottom line is that the world is entering a new era, one in which future economic progress depends on reversing environmental degradation. This in turn is contingent on new economic and population policies."*99 World Bank economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb warn us: "We human beings are being led into a dead end -- all too literally. We are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet. Even the one great success of the program that has governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to poverty. The United States is just now gaining a foretaste of the suffering that global economic policies, so enthusiastically embraced, have inflicted on hundreds of millions of others. If we continue on our present paths, future generations, if there are to be any, are condemned to misery."*100 Victor Furkiss, a prominent futurist and Professor of Government at Georgetown University, describes our appalling situation: "Present-day society is locked into four positive feedback loops which need to be broken: economic growth which feeds on itself, population growth which feeds on itself, technological change which feeds on itself, and a pattern of income inequality which seems to be self sustaining and which tends to spur growth in the other three areas. Ecological humanism must create an economy in which economic and population growth is halted, technology is controlled, and gross inequalities of income are done away with."*101 Our colossal stupidity is condemning our children to living a horrible nightmare -- one that they will not awaken from. Our current lifestyle cannot be sustained. Thus, we can see that today's big question is not whether children will achieve a higher standard of living than their parents (they won't).*102 Today's big question is whether or not they will live long enough to retire. ===================================== == The brink of political disaster == ===================================== In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, Economics Professor Robert Heilbroner projects continuing (but gradually slowing) economic growth until approximately the year 2005. At that time, the world will need highly authoritarian governments to control the transition to economic decline. In other words, a dictatorship will be necessary to insure that we all receive a proper burial. Indeed, we are probably seeing the beginning of Heilbroner's inevitable worldwide economic decline. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute: "For roughly two-thirds of all workers, real wages dropped 12% in the last decade and a half. Over that period, only the upper class experienced significant real income growth, with the richest one percent of Americans enjoying a 75% rise."*103 The damage suffered by Hawaii's working class is far worse than the national average. U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that Hawaii's consumer prices increased 73 percent during the 80's while wages only increased 13 percent. In other words, real wages dropped 32 percent and prices are increasing 600 percent faster than wages. And as we now know, this dismal trend is expected to accelerate in the future. In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French politician and writer, published his famous book, Democracy in America, still considered by many to be the greatest interpretive work ever written on the United States. De Tocqueville said that America's greatness was due to her passion for righteousness, "America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." De Tocqueville foresaw the dangerous trend of our present government, but was unable to name it: "I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism' and tyranny' are inappropriate. The thing itself is new, and, since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it."*104 The word that de Tocqueville was looking for hadn't yet been invented: "totalitarianism." Totalitarianism comes into being when all the governing and managing power of a society, both its political and its economic power, is concentrated in the centralized bureaucracy of the state. This is the case when our government combines with the cyborgs -- when both economic and political power sleep in the same bed: "As steel goes, so goes the nation."*105 ". . .what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."*106 (one-dollar-one-vote) So perhaps there is a method to today's madness. Daly tells us that the "Lack of control by the individual over institutions and technologies that not only affect his life but determine his livelihood is hardly democratic and is, in fact, an excellent training in the acceptance of totalitarianism."*107 In Hawaii, we see the tilt towards totalitarianism when our government becomes a business agent for the economic cyborgs. The most flagrant example of this is with geothermal development in Puna.*108 Other examples include military-based economic development, the Ka'u Spaceport, sea bed mining and government's perpetual attempts to "streamline the permitting process." Any attempt by government to remove barriers to economic development, without first establishing objective criteria to determine which economic developments are actually in the public's best interest, carries with it the stench of totalitarianism. In his new book, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, Yale historian Paul Kennedy argues that the political system of America is so corrupt that we will not be able to save ourselves. Perhaps some great mishap (next time a nuke parked under the World Trade Center) or a worldwide financial crash might shock us out of complacency, but Kennedy is definitely not optimistic. He argues that in order to save ourselves, we must become a different kind of country: "While an impressive array of American individuals, companies, banks, investors, and think tanks are scrambling to prepare for the twenty-first century, the United States as a whole is not and indeed cannot, without becoming a different kind of country. Perhaps a serious program of reforms might be undertaken following a sufficient shock to complacency, like a financial crash or a broadly perceived external threat; but just how likely that is to happen is impossible to say. Even if there should be such a catalyst, there surely could be no coherent response by the United States unless political leadership -- especially the president -- recognized the larger challenges facing the country and had the courage and the ability to mobilize opinion to accept changes which many would find uncomfortable. That in turn, would require leadership very different from the sort demonstrated by recent incumbents of the White House, whether it concerned domestic deficits or global population and environmental issues. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether traditional approaches will carry the American people successfully into the twenty-first century -- or whether they will pay a high price in assuming that things can stay the same at home while the world outside changes more swiftly than ever before."*109 The blunt message of Who Will Tell the People, by William Greider, is that American democracy is in much deeper trouble than most people will acknowledge. The glaring contradictions between faith and fact are so frightening that most of us can't help but turn away from the implications. The rotted condition of American democracy is difficult to comprehend, not because the symptoms are hidden, but because the symptoms are visible everywhere. Greider's work is among the most frightening I have read. What are some of the obvious symptoms of our rotted democracy? For example, reducing the National Debt is a high priority national goal, yet our debt continues to skyrocket out of control.*110, *111 We say that we need more economic growth for the well-being of our people, yet by all measures, the public's well-being has been plummeting -- even during periods of high economic growth.*112, *113, *114, *115, *116, *117, *118, *119 We claim to be a democracy where all are created equal, yet greedy men scramble for personal power, and our corrupt political system has become a national disgrace.*120 We announce that we want world peace, yet we continue to be the world's largest weapons dealer to third-world nations.*121 In 1990, 2,162 young Americans were killed in school by firearms and 5.3 percent of our students carried a gun!*122 We profess to be a Christian nation, yet every day we allow 30 million Americans to go hungry. (Third World famine-relief organizations, such as London-based Oxfam, are now focusing their efforts on Boston, Hollywood, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC.*123) Will we be able to salvage our political system without violence? Here is one candid opinion from an executive with the influential public-relations firm of Hill & Knowlton: "The big corporations, our clients, are scared shitless of the environmental movement," Mankiewicz confided. "They sense that there's a majority out there and that the emotions are all on the other side -- if they can be heard. I think the corporations are wrong about that. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail."*124 I'm afraid, Mankiewicz will be right: "The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail." ==================================================== == "Flat-Earth" economics is politics in disguise == ==================================================== By now we have seen how Adam Smith and his disciples founded Industrial Religion which has brought so much un-happiness to America. What's worse, our present -- incredibly stupid -- economic theory is rapidly closing out the options of future generations. One of the many critics of present economic theory, James Robertson, says in Future Wealth: "Conventional economics is based on primitive conceptual assumptions. It embodies questionable value judgments and incorrect understandings of facts, for example about human nature and the natural world. It reflects what economic life and the state of human development were like two hundred years ago. In short, it suffers from factual error, philosophical misconception, and historical obsolescence. The 21st-century needs a stronger conceptual basis than this."*125 No doubt concerned individuals, those that are still able to think in abstractions, are now wondering how such colossal stupidity has prevailed for so long. I think the answer lies in the complementary nature of economics and politics -- their principles are essentially the same. Niccolo Machiavelli did for political thought what Smith did for economic thought 250 years later -- he "abolished the moral problem." Both Smith and Machiavelli felt that the values in their theories were to be measured only by practical successes. Like Smith's, Machiavelli's message is that one must not allow moral considerations to deter the pursuit of self-interest. Machiavelli's "political views are more acceptable in our era than in any since his own; nowadays anyone who disagrees with him is assumed to be naive."*126 Thus, the most important principle in economics and politics is the same -- self-interest. "Flat-Earth"*127 economics readily serves modern-day Machiavellians and justifies their immoral activities -- economics is actually politics in disguise -- and vice versa. There are dozens of recent books, written by authors from many different disciplines, that challenge the incredible presuppositions which underlie standard "Flat-Earth" economic theory. Moreover, many authors are pointing the way towards achieving sanity in economic thought. The reason that we are unable to adopt a sane economic theory is because of the symbiotic relationship between today's Smithian economic system and today's Machiavellian political system; they continually reinforce each other. The reason that we are unable to adopt a sane economic theory is because of the "mother of all flaws" in our political system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink." -- George Orwell, 1984 =============================== == The "mother of all flaws" == =============================== Edmund Burke once said: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Burke is right, we good women and men can't treat life as a spectator sport -- we must do something. But in order to know what to do, we must first identify the specific fundamental fatal flaw in the American political system from which all other flaws spring -- the "mother of all flaws." What exactly is the flaw in our political system which allows evil to prevail and has deprived the American citizens of their natural God-given rights? Simply stated, it is this: The ease with which economic power may be exchanged for political power and vice versa. (one-dollar-one-vote) That's it! It's that simple! But now that we have identified the mother of all flaws in the American political system from which all other flaws spring, we good men and women must act. Since the problem may be so simply stated, it follows that the solution may also be simply stated: Stop the quick and easy exchange between economic power and political power -- bring back one-citizen-one-vote. Take the profit out of politics and we can take our country back from the economic cyborgs! But it's going to take more than just talk, more than just education. We are not going to be able to talk the economic cyborgs out of a profit. The cyborgs will not give up without a fight! ==================== == Natural rights == ==================== If any single document can be considered the source of the political beliefs of our founding fathers, it is the Second Treatise of Civil Government, published in 1689, by the English philosopher John Locke. Locke argued that there is a natural law governing humans. According to Locke, all of us are equal; all possess the same natural rights of life, liberty and property; all possess the same obligations not to infringe upon the rights of others: "And reason . . . teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."*128 According to Locke, if government ceases to protect the rights of individuals, then it is time for the people to rise up and take the power of government back into their own hands. Reading Locke, one is reminded of Thomas Jefferson's remarkable statement that society would benefit from a revolution every twenty years!*129 In fact, Locke's revolutionary ideas led directly Thomas Jefferson's words in our Declaration of Independence: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." The Anglo-American revolutionary writer Thomas Paine called for American independence in his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, which was widely distributed and had a profound influence on public opinion in America. He later published the Rights of Man, in which he defended the French Revolution, and proclaimed our God-given, individual human rights: "The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man, (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other. Every generation is equal in rights to the generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary. "Every history of the creation, and every tradionary account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean, that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being only the mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently, every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind. "The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority, or merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or equality of man. The expressions admit of no controversy. 'And God said, Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.' The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other distinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority, it is at least historical authority, and shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record. "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, not to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights."*130 But it remained for John Stuart Mill to convert the idea of liberty into a philosophically respectable doctrine, to put it in its most comprehensive, extensive, and systematic form -- the form in which it is generally known today: "The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, nut not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."*131 Beginning in 1776, the revolutionary assemblies in most states adopted constitutions. All of them declared the people to be the source of governmental authority. In the words of the Georgia constitution of 1777: "We, therefore, the representatives of the people, from whom all power originates and for whose benefit all government is intended, . . ." The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 expressed the same idea in the form of an original social contract: "The whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good." The most remarkable state document of this period was the bill of rights prefixed to the Virginia constitution of 1776. The Virginia Bill of Rights states the principles on which branches of government should operate and guarantee individual liberties: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." James Madison was the fourth president of the United States and known as the father of the Constitution because of his central role in the Constitutional Convention. Madison agreed with Locke and Jefferson when it came to revolution: "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every nation has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation."*132 U. S. Chief Justice John Marshall was principally responsible for developing the power of the U.S. Supreme Court and formulating constitutional law in the nation. In 1803, Marshall said: "That the people have an original right to establish for their future government such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected." Abraham Lincoln agreed with the rest: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is the most valuable, -- a most sacred right --- a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may chose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones."*133 Thus, we possess natural, individual human rights, we are born with them: they come from God, not from government. Indeed, government has a moral obligation to protect our God-given, individual human rights. Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler maintains that natural human rights derive from natural human needs. Thus, "the right to a decent living" is also included among natural human rights because all humans need to make a decent living. This is not an argument for indiscriminate welfare payments, however, because individual natural rights are balanced by each individual's obligation to make the effort to live well. According to Adler, we have a natural right only to those things that all human beings naturally "need" in order to lead a decent human life. Conversely, the rich do not have any sort of natural right to buy or exploit whatever they happen to "want," even if our government allows them to. (one-dollar-one-vote) In today's society, natural human rights constantly conflict with what could be called "unlimited property rights" (the right of individuals and economic cyborgs to accumulate unlimited amounts of property). In his great New Nationalism address in Kansas in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that "the object of government is the welfare of the people." To achieve this goal, Roosevelt insisted that human rights must take precedence over property rights: "We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. "No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. Adler takes these arguments ever further when he says that because all human beings have a moral obligation to try to live decent lives, it is their obligation, their "duty," to overthrow any government that frustrates or prevents them from doing so.*134 Therefore, I argue that the people have God-given, human rights, but economic cyborgs do not! The cyborgs were not created by God, but are the creations of greedy men, and men have no authority to bestow God-given rights upon their creations. If our corrupt government violates our God-given rights for the benefit of these tyrannical man-made creatures, we have the moral duty to overthrow our corrupt government and form a new one: a government that shall be most likely to serve our safety and happiness. ============================ == First Amendment rights == ============================ "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances." -- Amendment 1, Constitution of the United States (1791) Of the ten amendments that comprise our Bill of Rights, the principal guarantee of our common freedoms is contained in the First Amendment: freedom of religion, speech, assembly, petition and press. The Founding Fathers -- Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, and the rest -- recognized that freedoms of belief and expression would be vital for our new system of government to survive and flourish. The First Amendment protects our right of unpopular expression from repression by those in power. In 1927, U. S. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said: "Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties. . . . They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty; . . . that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be the fundamental principle of American government "Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. . . . It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. "Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the process of popular government, no danger flowing from speech may be termed clear and present. . . . Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution."*135 In 1963, U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stewart noted: "Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects, as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech . . . is . . . protected against censorship unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance or unrest. . . . There is no room under our constitution for a more restrictive view."*136 As Chief Justice Earl Warren was ending his tenure on the U. S. Supreme Court in the spring of 1969, the Court was presented with two cases concerning the "criminal syndication"*137 laws that were still on the books. In the first case, a young black man at a civil rights rally had been heard to say that he had just gotten his 1-A draft status for Vietnam, and if he were sent, the first person he would kill would be President Johnson. He was arrested and convicted of violating the 1917 Espionage Act. The U. S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction. It ruled that the young man did not pose a "real threat" to the President. Instead he just used "a rude offensive method of stating political opposition to the President." Then the Court struck down all criminal syndication laws with a landmark ruling in a case that grew out of a Ku Klux Klan rally near Cincinnati, Ohio. Clarence Brandenburg, an Ohio Klan leader, gave a rabble-rousing speech in which he said that while the Ohio Klan was not "revengent," if changes were not made in society, violence might happen. He was arrested and convicted of violating an old Ohio criminal syndication law. The U. S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction and found the Ohio law unconstitutional. The Court ruled that a speech not only must be directed at inciting imminent unlawful action but also must be likely to produce such immediate action. The Court noted that "freedoms of speech and press do not permit a state to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing such action."*138 Henry Steele Commager is a brilliant writer as well as an impeccable historian. Commager has often collaborated with other notable historians and is regarded as one of the foremost authorities on American history. Here is his opinion on criticism and dissent: "If our democracy is to flourish it must have criticism, if our government is to function it must have dissent. Only totalitarian governments insist upon conformity and they -- as we know -- do so at their peril. . . . Americans have a stake in nonconformity, for they know that the American genius is nonconformist. "It is easier to say what loyalty is not than to say what it is. It is not conformity. It is not passive acquiescence in the status quo. . . . It is tradition, an ideal, and a principle. . . . It is a realization that America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. . . "From the beginning Americans have known that there were new worlds to conquer, new truths to be discovered. Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism."*139 ===================================== == Rights require responsibilities == ===================================== "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." -- The Preamble to the Constitution (1787) Of the five phrases in the Preamble that state the objectives of government, the one that calls for promotion of the general welfare is the only one whose meaning has been hotly debated. In We Hold These Truths, Adler explains the meaning of the "promote the general welfare" clause: "In the first place, like justice, domestic tranquillity, common defense, and liberty, what the general welfare stood for had to be conceived as an element in the common or public good that the government was being created to serve directly, and the common good in turn conceived as a means to the pursuit of happiness -- the ultimate end to be achieved by a just and benevolent government."*140 The movement toward promoting the general welfare reached its climax when Franklin Roosevelt, in his 1944 message to Congress, said that: ". . . true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. . . . People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. . . . In our day, these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, the second Bill of Rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all." Roosevelt then went on to enumerate the economic rights that he asked Congress to find ways of implementing. They include: "The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or mines of the nation; "The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; "The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; "The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad; "The right of every family to a decent home; "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; "The right to adequate protection from economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; "The right to a good education."*141 But Roosevelt only told us half of the story! He didn't mention that along with each right went a corresponding duty. Thus, Roosevelt set America on a course of personal irresponsibility that has reached epidemic proportions. A 1989 study by People for the American Way found that: "Young people have learned only half of America's story. Consistent with the priority they place on personal happiness, young people reveal notions of America's unique character that emphasize freedom and license almost to the complete exclusion of service or participation. Although they clearly appreciate the democratic freedoms that, in their view, make theirs the 'best country in the world to live in,' they fail to perceive a need to reciprocate by exercising the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship."*142 Only 12 percent of those participating in the study felt that voting was part of what makes a good citizen. When asked what was special about the United States, they responded: "Individualism and the fact that it is a democracy and you can do whatever you want. . . . We really don't have any limits." But they're wrong -- we do have limits. Moreover, we have gone way beyond our limits. By stressing personal rights without responsibility, we are actually surrendering our personal rights and freedoms. President Kennedy made it clear when he said: "Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities."*143 It's time to take personal responsibility for our government. It's time to take control of our futures. It's time to take America back from the rich. ======================== == Where do we start? == ======================== Common sense tells us that the easiest way out of our spiral of un-happiness and social collapse is for the rich and powerful to see that their own self-interest consists of something more than just personal wealth and power. They need to see that the coming world of slums and pollution and ugliness and riots will not be pleasant. Their walled communities and private armies cannot save them from our common fate. Like us, they will be unable to escape the brutal consequences of their choices. According to Reinhold Niebuhr, the "man of power" may display compassionate impulses from time to time, but he always remains something of a beast of prey. He may be generous within his family and within the group that shares his power and privilege. Yet any generosity towards the working class is merely a cynical display of both power and pity. Moreover, even this generosity freezes within him if his power is challenged or his generosities are accepted without grateful humility. On the other hand, most average individuals lack the intellectual ability to form independent judgments. And, even when they form their own judgments, they are unlikely to overcome the fear of social disapproval and assert themselves.*144 But Saul Alinsky argues that we average individuals can force social changes. In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky persuades us to transform ourselves from "rhetorical radicals" into "realistic radicals." "You don't communicate with anyone purely on the rational facts or ethics of an issue. . . . It is only when the other party is concerned or feels threatened that he will listen -- in the arena of action, a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication."*145 Alinsky says that the community organizer must build a power structure: "No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation." Alinsky makes it clear that power is the prerequisite: "To attempt to operate on a good-will basis rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something that the world has not yet experienced." In fact, we have a recent example where Alinsky's radical ideas worked. Remember Rosa Parks? Ms. Parks was thrown in jail for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. A friend of hers, E. D. Nixon, bailed her out of jail, then called upon his friends to boycott the buses. "It's the only way to make the white folks see that we will not take this sort of thing any longer,"*146 he said. At that point, Mr. Nixon made a call to Dr. Martin Luther King . . . and the rest is history. By now, we ought to see why our pursuit of happiness has made us no happier than we were in 1957. We are pursuing the things that cannot bring happiness, while we are destroying the things that can. The economic cyborgs have trapped us in a spiral of un-happiness and social collapse. Moreover, we now are being condemned to lives that are devoid of natural beauty, to lives crowded with social convulsion and violent death. We must organize! Our only hope is to break the quick and easy exchange between political and economic power. Once we are free to determine our own destiny, we, the people will build a new society based upon Thomas Jefferson's love for TRUTH, EQUALITY, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, HAPPINESS (as we now understand it) -- and upon sane economic theory. President Kennedy stated the problem quite simply: "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."*147 ================ == Postscript == ================ AND it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud ; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. . . . And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them will perish. . . . And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them : for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me ; and shewing mercy unto thousands, of them that love me and keep my commandments. -- Exodus xix-xx, Revised Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory. -- Frederick Turner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; 'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulah's night And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton's sleep!" -- William Blake,Letter to Thomas Butts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly." -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, no. I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FOOTNOTES: 1 "World's Scientists Issue Urgent Warning to Humanity" -- Union of Concerned Scientists (11/18/92) 2 "Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future" -- Meadows & Meadows (1992) 3 "The World Environment 1979-1992: Two Decades of Challenge" -- Tolba and El-Kholy (1992) 4 "Nature, Technology and Society: Cultural Roots of the Current Environment Crisis" -- Ferkiss (1993) 5 "Educating a Nation: A Natural Step" -- In Context (Spring 1991) 6 "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" -- Schumacher (1973) 7 "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" -- Keynes(1936) 8 "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" -- Schumpeter(1942) (Schumpeter is typically rated as the century's second most important economist, behind Keynes) 9 "We're Number One: Where America Stands -- and Falls -- in the New World Order" -- Shapiro (1992) 10 "In the Absence of the Sacred" -- Mander (1991) 11 "The Prince" -- Machiavelli (1513) 12 "To Have or to Be" -- Fromm (1977) 13 Indeed, Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence began with "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." The substitution of the word "self-evident," with its scientific overtones, is thought to have been made by Benjamin Franklin. 14 "Six Great Ideas" -- Adler (1981) 15 "Haves Without Have-Nots" -- Adler (1991) 16 "Utilitarianism" -- Mill (1861) 17 "The Basis of Rules of Morality" -- Jefferson (letter to Thomas Law 1814) 18 "Economic Philosophy" -- Robinson (1964) -- quoted in "Adam Smith's Mistake: How a Moral Philosopher Invented Economics and Ended Morality" -- Lux (1990) 19 "The Theory of Political Economy" -- Jevons (1965 reprint) -- quoted in "Adam Smith's Mistake: How a Moral Philosopher Invented Economics and Ended Morality" -- Lux (1990) 20 "Adam Smith's Mistake: How a Moral Philosopher Invented Economics and Ended Morality" -- Lux (1990) 21 "The Economics of resources or the resources of economics" -- American Economic Review (May 1974) - quoted in "Steady-State Economics" -- Daly (1991) 22 "The Laws of Human Relations" -- Gossen (1854) -- quoted in "Humanistic Economics" -- Lutz and Lux (1988) 23 "The World Almanac and Book of Facts" -- Microsoft Bookshelf (1993) 24 "Two American economists share Nobel Prize" -- West Hawaii Today (Oct 13,1993) 25 "Theories of Personality" -- Schultz (1976) 26 "To Have or To Be" -- Fromm (1977) 27 "The Maximum Wage: A Common-Sense Prescription for Revitalizing America -- by Taxing the Very Rich" -- Pizzigati (1992) 28 "The Myth of the Middle Class: Notes on Affluence and Equality" -- Parker (1972) -- quoted in "The Maximum Wage: A Common-Sense Prescription for Revitalizing America -- by Taxing the Very Rich -- Pizzigati (1992) 29 "The Pursuit of Equality in American History" -- Pole (1978) -- quoted in Pizzigati 30 "The Federal Reserve Bank" -- Kennan (1966) -- quoted in "The Unseen Hand" -- Epperson (1985) 31 "Wealth Triumphs, We Lose" -- In These Times (August 6-19, 1986) -- quoted in Pizzigati 32 "Voices of the American Revolution" -- Peoples Bicentennial Commission (1975) -- quoted in "Corporations and the Environment" (1981) 33 "In the Absence of the Sacred" -- Mander (1991) 34 Ibid. 35 "The Maximum Wage: A Common-Sense Prescription for Revitalizing America -- by Taxing the Very Rich" -- Pizzigati (1992) 36 "Land and Power in Hawaii" -- Cooper and Daws (1985) 37 "To Have or to Be" -- Fromm (1977) 38 "The Broken Covenant" -- Bellah (1975) 39 "Journal of Retailing" -- quoted in "How Much is Enough" -- Durning (1992) 40 "The Work of Nations" -- Reich (1991) 41 "Fortune" -- (December 1953) -- quoted in Reich 42 "In the Absence of the Sacred" -- Mander (1991) 43 "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" -- Schor (1992) 44 "The Art of Loving" -- Fromm (1956) (See also "To Have or to Be" -- 1977) 45 "Are We Happy Yet?" -- Durning (The Futurist Jan-Feb 1993) 46 "The Psychology of Happiness" -- Argyle -- quoted in "How Much is Enough?" -- Durning (1992) 47 "The Poverty of Affluence" -- Wachtel (1989) 48 "Happy People" -- Freedman (1978) -- quoted in Wachtel 49 "Symptoms, Syndromes, and Systems" -- Bateson (1978) 50 "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity" -- Bateson (1979) 51 "The Myth of the Machine" -- Mumford (1966) 52 "Essay in Persuasion" -- Keynes (1931) 53 "A Brewing Revolt Against the Rich" -- Fortune (December 1990) -- quoted in Pizzigati 54 "Theories of Personality" -- Schultz (1976) 55 "Toward a Psychology of Being" -- Maslow (1968) 56 "The Psychology of Being Human" -- McNeil (1974) 57 "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time" -- Horney (1937) 58 Ibid. 59 "Theories of Personality" -- Schultz (1976) 60 Ibid. 61 "The Psychology of Being Human" -- McNeil (1974) 62 "Mental Disorder Numbers Outpace Treatment" -- Science News (February, 27, 1993) 63 "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time" -- Horney (1937) 64 "The Poverty of Affluence" -- Wachtel (1989) 65 "Media Sexploitation" -- Key (1976) 66 "Brave New World Revisited" -- Huxley (1965) 67 "The Plug-In Drug" -- Winn (1977). 68 "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Origional Tree of Knowledge" -- McKenna (1992). 69 "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit" -- Gore (1992). 70 "TV Violence" -- Associated Press (March 18, 1993) 71 "Warning: TV Violence Is Harmful, Networks Acknowledge" -- Washington Post (July 1, 1993) 72 "Expect TV not to curb violence" -- George Will (June 25, 1993) 73 "Violence and Aggression" -- Bailey and Time-Life Books (1976) 74 "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" -- Mander (1978) 75 Ibid. 76 "The Great Reckoning: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression" -- Davidson and Rees-Mogg (1993) 77 "Rachel's Hazardous Waste News" -- (January 20, 1993) 78 "When Technology Wounds: The Human Consequences of Progress" -- Glendinning (1990) 79 "Rachel's Hazardous Waste News" -- (December 30, 1992) 80 "Rachel's Hazardous Waste News" -- (June 17, 1993) 81 "Making Peace with the Planet" -- Commoner (1990) 82 "Russians Doomed for Next 25 Years" -- Financial Times (October 8, 1992) -- quoted in Brown 83 "The Long-Term Outlook for Hawai's Population and Economy" -- Pai address at the 1993 United Way Symposium (March 12, 1993) 84 "Toxics in Your Community Newsletter" -- Citizen's Environmental Coalition (Winter, 1993) 85 "The American Labor Movement" -- Litwack (1962) 86 "America: What Went Wrong?" -- Barlett and Steele (1992) 87 "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" -- Schor (1992) 88 "Solidarity" -- UAW (May-June 1993) 89 "The Tao of Physics (Third Edition)" -- Capra (1991) 90 Ibid. 91 "World's Scientists Issue Urgent Warning to Humanity" -- Union of Concerned Scientists (11/18/92) 92 "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit" -- Gore (1992) 93 "Population Growth, Resource Consumption, and a Sustainable World" -- Royal Society of London and the U.S. Academy of Sciences (1992) -- quoted in Brown 94 "State of the World 1993" -- Brown et al. 95 "Environment Office Warns of Ozone Hole Over Germany" -- Reuter's News Service (March 18, 1993) 96 "Dutch Scientists Say Greenhouse Effect a Reality" -- Reuter's News Service (March 18, 1993) 97 "Plants May Not Be Able To Stop Global Warming" -- Reuter's News Service (August 11,, 1993) 98 "Indonesia Faces Chaos From Rising Seas" -- Reuter's News Service (August 12,, 1993) 99 "State of the World 1993" -- Brown et al. 100 "For the Common Good" -- Daly and Cobb (1989) 101 "The Future of Technological Civilization" -- Furkiss (1974) -- quoted in Daly and Cobb 102 "Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream" -- Newman (1993) 103 "Beyond Weapons: A New Vision of Security" -- Rocky Mountain Institute (Fall/Winter 1991) 104 "Democracy in America" -- de Tocqueville (1840) 105 U.S. Steel company motto -- (quoted in Reich) 106 Statement by president of General Motors -- (quoted in Reich) 107 "Steady-State Economics" -- Daly (1991) 108 "Geothermal Development in Hawaii: The limits of State Autonomy and Legitimacy" -- Rodriguez and Juvik (Dec. 1992) 109 "Preparing for the Twenty-First Century" -- Kennedy (1993) 110 "Bankruptcy 1995" -- Figgie (1992) 111 "The Great Reckoning: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression" -- Davidson and Rees-Mogg (1993) 112 "America: What Went Wrong?" -- Barlett and Steele (1992) 113 "The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath" -- Phillips (1990) 114 "Boiling Point" -- Phillips (1993) 115 "The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure" -- Schor (1992) 116 "We're Number One: Where America Stands -- and Falls -- in the New World Order" -- Shapiro (1992) 117 "Where We Stand: Can America Make It in the Global Race for Wealth, Health, and Happiness?" -- Wolff (1992) 118 "A Green Hawaii -- Sourcebook for Development Alternatives" -- Rohter (1992) 119 "The Price of Paradise: Lucky We Live Hawaii?" -- Roth (1992) 120 "Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy" -- Greider (1992) 121 The Center for Defense Information -- 202-862-0700 (1993) 122 "It's Not Just New York . . ." -- Newsweek (March 9, 1992) -- quoted in "The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda" -- Etzioni (1993) 123 "Third World America" -- The Maui News -- (Nov. 19, 1992) 124 "Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy" -- Greider (1992) 125 "Future Wealth: A New Economics for the 21st Century" -- Robertson (1990) 126 "An Incomplete Education" -- Jones and Wilson (1987) 127 "The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics" -- Henderson (1988) 128 "Of Civil Government: Second Treatise" -- Locke (1689) 129 "Philosophy -- A Modern Encounter" -- Wolff (1971) 130 "The Rights of Man" -- Paine (1791) 131 "On Liberty" -- Mill (1859) 132 "Passport to Liberty: The People and Ideas That Make America Great" -- Sammer (1992) 133 "Lincoln on Democracy" -- Cuomo and Holzer (1990) 134 "Haves Without Have-Nots" -- Adler (1991) 135 "Passport to Liberty: The People and Ideas That Make America Great" -- Sammer (1992) 136 "The First Amendment Book" -- Wagman (1991) 137 Criminal syndication is defined as any doctrine or teaching of unlawful acts of force as a means of effecting political change. 138 "The First Amendment Book" -- Wagman (1991) 139 "Passport to Liberty: The People and Ideas That Make America Great" -- Sammer (1992) 140 "We Hold These Truths" -- Adler (1987) 141 Ibid. 142 "The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda" -- Etzioni (1993) 143 Address at Vanderbilt University -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 18, 1963) 144 "Moral Man and Immoral Society" -- Niebuhr (1932) 145 "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals" -- Alinsky (1971) 146 "The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr." -- Coretta King (1958) 147 "Inaugural Address" -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961)